The Buesching mastodon died in a battle over access to mates at age 34, according to the researchers. That slab was used for the new isotopic and life-history analyses, which enabled scientists to reconstruct changing patterns of landscape use during two key periods: adolescence and the final years of adulthood. He later used a bandsaw to cut a thin, lengthwise slab from the center of the animal's banana-shaped, 9.5-foot right tusk, which is longer and more completely preserved than the left. U-M paleontologist and study co-leader Daniel Fisher participated in the Buesching mastodon excavation 24 years ago. "Using new modeling techniques and a powerful geochemical toolkit, we've been able to show that large male mastodons like Buesching migrated every year to the mating grounds." "The result that is unique to this study is that for the first time, we've been able to document the annual overland migration of an individual from an extinct species," said University of Cincinnati paleoecologist Joshua Miller, the study's first author. The study also shows that the Buesching bull may have spent time exploring central and southern Michigan, which seems fitting for a creature whose full-size fiberglass-cast skeleton is on display at the University of Michigan Museum of Natural History in Ann Arbor. Northeast Indiana was likely a preferred summer mating ground for this solitary rambler, who made the trek annually during the last three years of his life, venturing north from his cold-season home, according to a paper scheduled for online publication June 13 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The 8-ton adult, known as the Buesching mastodon, was killed when an opponent punctured the right side of his skull with a tusk tip, a mortal wound that was revealed to researchers when the animal's remains were recovered from a peat farm near Fort Wayne in 1998.
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